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Lawmakers expressed condolences in the wake of the Connecticut shooting on Twitter. | Reuters

“With all the carnage from gun violence in our country, it’s still almost impossible to believe that a mass shooting in a kindergarten class could happen,” said Bloomberg, an independent who founded and co-chairs Mayors Against Illegal Guns. “It has come to that. Not even kindergarteners learning their A,B,Cs are safe. … President Obama rightly sent his heartfelt condolences to the families in Newtown. But the country needs him to send a bill to Congress to fix this problem - and take immediate executive action. Calling for ‘meaningful action’ is not enough. We have heard that rhetoric before. What we have not seen is leadership - not from the President and not from Congress. That must end today. This is a national tragedy and it demands a national response.”

Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York called for a “serious discussion about gun control.”

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“Yet another unstable person has gotten access to firearms and committed an unspeakable crime against innocent children,” Nadler said in a statement. “We cannot simply accept this as a routine product of modern American life. If now is not the time to have a serious discussion about gun control and the epidemic of gun violence plaguing our society, I don’t know when is. How many more Columbines and Newtowns must we live through? I am challenging President Obama, the Congress and the American public to act on our outrage and, finally, do something about this.”

Nadler was joined by a fellow New York Democrat, Rep. Nita Lowey.

“We cannot tolerate mass shootings as a mere inconvenience or a normal part of our everyday lives,” Lowey said in a statement. “Easy availability of the deadliest weapons to the most dangerous people has cost countless lives and caused immeasurable suffering, never more so than today. Our expressions of sympathy must be matched with concrete actions to stop gun violence.”

“How many more innocent people have to die senseless deaths until we enact stricter rules that address unfettered access to guns?” Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Ed Markey said. “Thirty-four people are killed with guns every day in America. It past time for a national debate on gun control and solutions to ensure that this terrible trend in mass shootings finally comes to an end.”

“It seems that more and more frequently we are reacting to mass shootings, from the tragic movie theater shooting in Aurora, CO, to one that happened in my district, at an Old Bridge, NJ supermarket in August,” Pallone said. “It’s time that we do more than hold candlelight vigils to honor the lives that have been lost from guns and take action to stem gun violence. We need to have a real conversation about how we get guns off of our streets and enact meaningful, sensible gun control laws. Improvements to our mental health care system must also be evaluated to determine the best ways to identify and treat these dangerous mental illnesses.”

Democratic Reps. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois and George Miller of California also called for a more thorough debate on gun control.

While most politicians were avoiding discussion of gun policy in their early statements, a debate over gun control quickly broke out in the media.

On MSNBC, anchor Alex Wagner said that she hoped there would be “political capital” for gun control.

“It is hopefully — we say this every single time we cover one of these things — there is a line in the sand. There has got to be some kind of measurable change, some kind of reaction. One would hope that there would be some sort of political capital to reform the way in which we handle gun and gun violence in this country,” Wagner said.

She added: “For these children who are in third, and fourth and fifth grade to bear witness and to be victims of this — I think the parental outcry from a moment like this has to be almost deafening,” Wagner said.

We still know little but it seems very likely that assault weapons were involved if more than 100 shots were fired in a short period. Assault weapons are primarily designed for the mass slaughter of human beings. There are those who say that the value of having such weapons in private hands exceeds the harm. Let's vote on that. The Republican plan allows anyone over 18 that has not YET committed a felony or anyone who has not YET been declared formally insane to buy such weapons as often as they like. A sane decent plan would say no. With assault weapons you need to justify the ownership because too many of our children have died at the hands of assault weapons owners.

Let decency and common sense triumph over the ideology of the Republican Party.

Let's place the blame where it belongs: liberals and their pro-abortion extremism have devalued life for the last forty years. It's no coincidence that most of the mass killings in American history have occurred in the same forty year span. Stop the hate and we'll have some peace.

Yet another gun tragedy. Even more heartbreak and pain. Fear, paranoia and anxiety now more a part of our everyday lives. Yet, again, all we and politicians can do is ‘offer our prayers’. When will we begin to address this type outrage with reason, logic and common sense? When will we stop deferring our responsibility to some myth-based, friendly old man in the sky? We have been praying to various ‘gods’ around the world for centuries to stop wars, end violence, calm storms, relieve famine, cure illness and countless other fearsome challenges to all humanity. How has that worked out for us? Not well, I fear. Yet, we can still point to heavens and thank ‘god’ when our team scores a touchdown. How stupid are we?

Yet another gun tragedy. Even more heartbreak and pain. Fear, paranoia and anxiety now more a part of our everyday lives. Yet, again, all we and politicians can do is ‘offer our prayers’. When will we begin to address this type outrage with reason, logic and common sense? When will we stop deferring our responsibility to some myth-based, friendly old man in the sky? We have been praying to various ‘gods’ around the world for centuries to stop wars, end violence, calm storms, relieve famine, cure illness and countless other fearsome challenges to all humanity. How has that worked out for us? Not well, I fear. Yet, we can still point to heavens and thank ‘god’ when our team scores a touchdown. How stupid are we?

Let's place the blame where it belongs: liberals and their pro-abortion extremism have devalued life for the last forty years. It's no coincidence that most of the mass killings in American history have occurred in the same forty year span. Stop the hate and we'll have some peace.

Yet another gun tragedy. Even more heartbreak and pain. Fear, paranoia and anxiety now more a part of our everyday lives. Yet, again, all we and politicians can do is ‘offer our prayers’. When will we begin to address this type outrage with reason, logic and common sense? When will we stop deferring our responsibility to some myth-based, friendly old man in the sky? We have been praying to various ‘gods’ around the world for centuries to stop wars, end violence, calm storms, relieve famine, cure illness and countless other fearsome challenges to all humanity. How has that worked out for us? Not well, I fear. Yet, we can still point to heavens and thank ‘god’ when our team scores a touchdown. How stupid are we?

Yet another gun tragedy. Even more heartbreak and pain. Fear, paranoia and anxiety now more a part of our everyday lives. Yet, again, all we and politicians can do is ‘offer our prayers’. When will we begin to address this type outrage with reason, logic and common sense? When will we stop deferring our responsibility to some myth-based, friendly old man in the sky? We have been praying to various ‘gods’ around the world for centuries to stop wars, end violence, calm storms, relieve famine, cure illness and countless other fearsome challenges to all humanity. How has that worked out for us? Not well, I fear. Yet, we can still point to heavens and thank ‘god’ when our team scores a touchdown. How stupid are we?

" A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government." George Washington - from Second Amendment University

Yet another gun tragedy. Even more heartbreak and pain. Fear, paranoia and anxiety now more a part of our everyday lives. Yet, again, all we and politicians can do is ‘offer our prayers’. When will we begin to address this type outrage with reason, logic and common sense? When will we stop deferring our responsibility to some myth-based, friendly old man in the sky? We have been praying to various ‘gods’ around the world for centuries to stop wars, end violence, calm storms, relieve famine, cure illness and countless other fearsome challenges to all humanity. How has that worked out for us? Not well, I fear. Yet, we can still point to heavens and thank ‘god’ when our team scores a touchdown.

Let's place the blame where it belongs: liberals and their pro-abortion extremism have devalued life for the last forty years. It's no coincidence that most of the mass killings in American history have occurred in the same forty year span. Stop the hate and we'll have some peace.

A free people ought not only to be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government." George Washington - from Second Amendment University

The Washington administration's suppression of the Whiskey Rebellion met with widespread popular approval.[99] The episode demonstrated the new national government had the willingness and ability to suppress violent resistance to its laws. It was therefore viewed by the Washington administration as a success, a view that has generally been endorsed by historians.[100] The Washington administration and its supporters usually did not mention, however, that the whiskey excise remained difficult to collect, and that many westerners continued to refuse to pay the tax.[2